Convert a TIFF Scan to PDF

Converting TIFF to PDF repackages scanned pages — including every page of a multi-page TIFF — into a document anyone can open, since almost nothing outside scanning software reads TIFF anymore. Done properly, the conversion is lossless: the scan's image data and compression are carried into the PDF unchanged. This page covers macOS Preview, the lossless img2pdf command line tool, and ImageMagick, and explains why browsers cannot do this conversion for you.

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Why there is no one-click converter on this page

Browsers cannot decode TIFF: the format is a professional scanning container with dozens of compression variants (CCITT G4 fax, LZW, JPEG-in-TIFF, packbits) and a multi-page directory structure that the web platform never adopted, so client-side JavaScript cannot reliably read your scan — least of all its second and later pages. The tools below handle all of it locally.

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How to convert a TIFF scan to PDF (step by step)

Method 1 — macOS Preview (handles multi-page TIFF natively)

  1. Double-click the .tif file to open it in Preview. A multi-page TIFF appears as a stack of page thumbnails in the sidebar — check that all pages are there.
  2. Drag thumbnails in the sidebar if pages need reordering (double-sided scanners often interleave them).
  3. Choose File > Export as PDF, name the file, and click Save. Every page of the TIFF becomes a page of the PDF.
  4. Open the result and confirm the page count and legibility at 100% zoom.

Method 2 — img2pdf command line (lossless, the archivist's choice)

  1. Install it with pip install img2pdf (Windows, macOS, Linux).
  2. Convert one file, keeping all pages and the original compression untouched: img2pdf scan.tif -o scan.pdf. Multiple TIFFs merge in argument order: img2pdf page1.tif page2.tif -o combined.pdf.
  3. Optionally fix the paper size so viewers print at true scale: img2pdf --pagesize A4 scan.tif -o scan.pdf. img2pdf never re-encodes pixels — a CCITT G4 fax stays G4, a JPEG-in-TIFF stays JPEG — so output quality and size match the input exactly.

Method 3 — ImageMagick (when pages need processing too)

  1. Install ImageMagick, then run magick scan.tif scan.pdf; every TIFF directory becomes a PDF page.
  2. Add processing flags when the scan needs cleanup, e.g. magick scan.tif -deskew 40% -density 300 scan.pdf. Note ImageMagick decodes and re-encodes the images, so use -quality deliberately (or prefer img2pdf when no processing is needed).
  3. On Windows without installs: open the TIFF in a viewer that supports it (IrfanView is a common free choice) and print to Microsoft Print to PDF — but verify multi-page handling in the print dialog.

How it works

TIFF is not a single image format but a container of tagged directories: each IFD (image file directory) describes one page — dimensions, bit depth, resolution tags, and whichever compression the scanner chose. Office scanners writing black-and-white documents almost always use CCITT Group 4, the fax compression standard, which stores a 300 DPI A4 page in 30–60 KB. Color and grayscale scans typically use LZW, Deflate, or embedded JPEG. Multi-page documents are just chained IFDs in one file — the feature browsers and most image viewers never implemented, and the reason "my TIFF only shows page 1" is such a common complaint.

PDF turns out to be a nearly perfect target for this data, because it natively supports the same compression schemes: CCITTFaxDecode for Group 4, FlateDecode and LZWDecode for the lossless schemes, DCTDecode for JPEG. A well-built converter therefore does not decode the images at all — it lifts each IFD's compressed strip data into a PDF image XObject with matching decode parameters, wraps it in a page whose media box is computed from the TIFF's resolution tags (3508 pixels at 300 DPI becomes 842 points, exactly A4's height), and writes the document. That is byte-level lossless and explains why img2pdf's output is nearly the same size as its input.

The conversion that goes wrong is the one that rasterizes: decode G4 to pixels, re-encode as JPEG, and a 45 KB fax page balloons to a megabyte while text edges grow compression halos. If your converted file is dramatically larger than the TIFF, that is what happened. And in either case the output stays a picture of the page — for searchable text you still need an OCR pass afterward.

Worked example: a 22-page contract scan from 2009

A 22-page contract scanned long ago to a single multi-page TIFF: 1-bit black-and-white, 300 DPI, CCITT G4 compression, 1.1 MB total (about 50 KB per page). Converted with img2pdf contract.tif -o contract.pdf, the output was a 22-page, 1.15 MB PDF in under a second — the G4 data copied through untouched, with ~2 KB of PDF structure per page added.

For contrast, the same file pushed through an image editor that re-saved pages as JPEG produced a 19.4 MB PDF — seventeen times larger, with faintly fuzzy character edges. The final step for the legal team was OCR: running ocrmypdf contract.pdf contract-searchable.pdf added an invisible text layer (finishing at 1.6 MB), making the contract searchable without altering the scanned images.

TIFF to PDF — frequently asked questions

How do I convert a multi-page TIFF to PDF without losing pages?

Use a tool that reads all TIFF directories, not just the first: macOS Preview (File, then Export as PDF), img2pdf, or ImageMagick all emit one PDF page per TIFF page. Image editors like older Paint versions show only the first page, and converting from them silently drops the rest.

Why can I not open a TIFF in my web browser?

Browsers never adopted TIFF: it is a container with dozens of optional compression schemes and multi-page directory structures aimed at scanning and prepress, not web delivery. Safari has partial support, but Chrome and Firefox render nothing, which is also why no trustworthy in-page TIFF converter exists.

Does TIFF to PDF conversion lose scan quality?

Not if the tool repacks rather than re-encodes: img2pdf copies the image data losslessly, and Preview keeps the original resolution. Quality only drops if you choose a tool or setting that resamples the scan or recompresses it as lower-quality JPEG.

Why is my scanned TIFF so small but my PDF suddenly huge?

Black-and-white scans are often stored with CCITT Group 4 fax compression, which is extremely efficient; a converter that decodes them and re-saves as JPEG can inflate the file twenty-fold. PDF supports CCITT G4 natively, so a good converter keeps the original compression and the tiny file size.

Will the text in my scanned TIFF be searchable in the PDF?

No. A scan is a picture of text, and the conversion keeps it as an image, so the PDF has no selectable text layer. Making it searchable requires OCR software such as Adobe Acrobat, ABBYY FineReader, or the open-source tool ocrmypdf after conversion.

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